Cardboard box mountain poses new headache for city waste collection services

The online shopping boom and physical shop closures are giving local councils a new headache – how to cope with mountains of empty cardboard boxes, the Volkskrant reported on Monday.

In Utrecht, for example, the volume of paper and cardboard for recycling is up 10% on last year, the paper said.

However, boxes dumped next to waste containers are not recycled, but burnt alongside general household rubbish, so the true figure is likely to be far higher, the paper said.

In Amsterdam, more than half the waste placed next to containers is cardboard and the city has increased the frequency of collection services in an effort to contain the problem.

On a normal Monday, the capital’s rubbish services collect an average 78 tonnes of paper and cardboard, but on November 30, after Black Friday, this had gone up to 95 tonnes, the Volkskrant said.

Amsterdam and Utrecht are now experimenting with underground waste containers with larger openings in an effort to stop them clogging up. The results of those trials are due early next year.